A Common Grievance

The scream didn’t grab anyone’s attention. It was commonplace here but the crack as he hit the floor stunned the whole room into silence. Jack walked over to the strange man, trying to see what damage had been done. As he moved closer, he saw the pool of blood. He winced. He knew he should be used to it by now but picking up the carcasses never became any easier.

Bending his knees, Jack held his nose. That was always the worst part: the smell. Often, his fellow dwellers would vomit, causing the smell to worsen still. Many times, fights broke out for no apparent reason. Simple anger, Jack would think. Annoyance at this strange reoccurrence. This wasn’t Jack’s place. No-one knew who the patron was, but it didn’t matter. Every establishment in this town, in this country, was the same. Where else would they go?

Jack looked up. A few of the others were holding back the furious parrot. “You can’t have this one!” came the cries. Jack never understood why the parrot was allowed to drink beer from the same glasses as everyone else but now wasn’t the time. He had work to do. This mystery had to be solved before he could even think about anything else.

Finally, Jack looked at the strange man. He touched him gently on the arm, stared directly into his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry”, he sobbed. “I’m sorry dear wanderer”.

“No problem” said the man, who hadn’t quite worked out why nobody was yelling at him for breaking the chair. “These things happen”.

Jack smiled politely and picked up the bloody fish corpse from the floor. He raised it in the air and cried “When will this stop? When will we finally see the damage we have done? When will we heed the call for a better world?” Of course, everyone knew it was too late. By now, humans were spending much of their time, literally swimming with the fishes. Nobody had taken notice centuries ago so those who weren’t burned by fire lived with the regular floods from a plastic laden sea.

Jack threw the fish back on the floor and stormed out. “Somebody else can clean up the mess this time!”

All from a phrase or two on Duolingo

Some of you will know how much I love languages. I spend a lot of time improving my skills and Duolingo has been one of my favourite learning tools for a long time. Recently, I’ve been trying to improve my Latin. Duolingo’s Latin course is very much in Beta but it still provides some useful vocabulary. One of the things I love are the seemingly strange phrases.

For example, a common translation is “Psittacus iratus ebrius est”, which could mean “the angry parrot is drunk”. That combined with the common references to fish being thrown on the floor inspired me to write a story. It started off as a random bit of fun but the more I wrote, the more I felt like there could be something more substantial to say.

One of my favourite things about stories is that they often seem to take us where they want to go. We get things started, of course, but once the pen hits the paper, our world is transported by the characters and scene we’ve set.

Writing your stories

A lot of good advice talks about planning ahead when you’re writing. It is a good idea to plan, even if it’s just in your head but it’s also OK to veer in another direction if you’re pulled away. As long as it makes sense, you can recalibrate. The main message here is: don’t panic! There’s not one way to write, there’s not one way to plan. Listen to others, take the bits that make sense to you, then do it your way.

We'll be back next week

If you can't wait until then, you can find more from Puck Creations by checking out?King Puck's Wisdom?and you can listen to every podcast released so far by visiting our?Puck Podcast?page. See you soon!